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Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
Can we all agree first, that it is fraud.
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No, we can't, because there is no deception here. Period.
Anyone is allowed to charge and/or profit off of public domain works. It doesn't matter who preserved the work in the past, or who put any effort into it. There are no legal OR moral constraints in this regard.
Again, this is why dozens of publishers have been able to print public domain works for decades, why you can charge for a movie version of a Jane Austen book, why you can charge admission to an opera....
As far as I know, the only thing PG can do is control their own trademark. You can't sell an "official Project Gutenberg edition!" without their permission, but that's pretty much all they can do.
Of course, it may be a good idea for the seller to donate to PG. And you have no idea whether they donate. But it's not a requirement.
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Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
And if you don't agree, then please present a counter argument that addresses the classification of the act, not its legal definition or legislative consequences.
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Sure.
The only way you can legally restrict what a person can do with content is via copyright. If a work is under copyright, then the rights holder is the one who can say "yes give it away for free, at all times, and anyone who charges for it will get sued" or "I only want one company to publish this book and collect the profits."
If it is in public domain, then the work has no copyright protection, and the public can do whatever they want with it. You can publish your own paper version of
Emma and charge for it, as can Penguin and Random House. You can make a movie version of
Emma, and so can 2 other movie studios. You can create derivative works (
Emma Vs Zombies), as can someone else (
Emma Vs Dracula).
The only way PG could stop you from charging for a public domain work -- even one they formatted -- would be to
assert a copyright.
Protecting a public domain book by asserting copyright is clearly a contradiction.
Ergo, PG cannot control the works their volunteers prepare.
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Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
Let me put the question to you another way. Say tomorrow someone comes to you with an idea for making a quick buck. He says, "Let's download all the books from PG and run them through calibre, then sell them for $x." Would you encourage this person, or not?
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Encourage? Not really.
Call him a bloodthirsty leech, when nothing they do deprives the public of the free versions? No.
I might add, as long as there are free versions that are indistinguishable from the paid ones, no one is going to make a mint off of this. And many paid versions
do have at least some additional work.